Jared Cohn headlines Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness, on DVD October 6th from The Asylum. We caught up with Cohn – who, like his character in the movie, is a filmmaker too – to speak everything terrorizing fish prior to the film’s bow.

Hi Jared, now the new film isn’t Sharknado 4 but a spin-off, of sorts, is that right? Can you give us the 411?

Correct, this version is about the forgotten, secret movie that was buried. It is a comedic origin story shot in a documentary style. We had Zack Ward, Julie McCullough and Rachel True in the cast. Was a great experience.

How did it come about?

What I believed happened was one of the companies that The Asylum works with was inquiring about how Sharknado came to be, and someone thought wouldn’t it be funny if we made a comedic version of how this all happened? Luckily I got to be apart of it!

Had you been a fan of the earlier Sharknado movies?

Yes, I am a fan of all movies done by The Asylum because everything they make has some sort of craziness to it. Plus, I know the producers and a lot of the people that worked on the movie, they are friends of mine and I like to support good people doing what they love. That fact that it became such a big thing is great for all of those involved.

What makes this one different?

This one is completely different because this is an origin story, this is a comedic retelling of how Sharknado came to happen. I play the original director/creator and got to be all crazy and eccentric and act with the partners of the company, so there was a lot of the real elements working like we shot a lot of the movie at the actual Asylum, so that was really cool to get to shoot inside the real building.

The Sharknado films are renowned for their gory ridiculousness… anything in this to top the originals?

What’s funny was that we actually used a lot of the same props that were used in all of the Sharknado movies. We shot the movie at The Asylum headquarters, where all of those movies were produced so every single prop, from every single movie was at our disposal! They have a huge stage with all sorts of crazy things. It was fun just to walk around and see all that stuff.

You direct, too, was there ever a consideration that you might direct?

Not this one. We had a very experienced and talented director Jeremy Wagener who has made some amazing documentaries and this one was always going to shot in documentary style so he was the perfect person to make this happen.
______